FLASOU REVISITED I visited Flasou, my mother’s village, a couple of weeks ago. It is a small village nestled on the northern slopes of the Troodos mountains, somewhere between Kakopetria and Lefke. The only reference that I have ever came across this place in books was in George Hill’s “History of Cyprus”, and late Mr Rauf Denktaş’s autobiographical booklet “Karkot Deresi” (the Karkot stream). George Hill mentions that one of the first things that the Lusignans did when they had acquired the island from Richard the Lionheart in 1192, was to lease Flasou in perpetuity to some noble order in Marseilles. Why on earth anyone would be interested in this remote and small village is beyond me, but I am sure they had their reasons. Mr Denktaş paints a beautiful and touching picture of this village which he used to visit during his youth, and the life that existed there towards the end of the British colonial rule. I never had anything to do with Flasou. Like a good many places in Cyprus before 1963, it was a bi-communal village where the Greek Cypriots were the majority and the Turkish Cypriots the minority. And just like many other such villages, Turkish Cypriots were literally kicked out and their houses were burnt down in 1963. This was one of the main reasons why I wanted to have nothing to do with the Greek Cypriots until fairly recently, because I held them responsible for the utter poverty that my grandparents endured between 1963 and 1974. I was very angry about the destitute situation that my grandmother in particular was forced to experience for all those years, because she was the love of my life. And it was, by a rather strange twist of fate, during my mother’s funeral service that this perception of mine of the Greek Cypriots took a serious battering. Towards the end of the funeral, as I was looked aghast in total disbelief at the proceedings, still in denial of what had happened, the hodja announced there was a Greek Cypriot from my mother’s village, who had brought water from there and that he wanted to sprinkle it over her grave. This was the most beautiful gesture that I had ever come across; something that had touched me deep inside despite the state I was in on that day. But I had to wait until I was ready and able to talk about the fact that my mother had gone in order to go and thank this man, whose name I was told was George (Yorgo). And that took me more than five years. I first went a couple of months ago but he was not at home. I tried again a couple of weeks ago anew and again we were told that he was not at home. So I left the sweets that I had brought with me with his son, and went for a stroll in the village. There is no sign that the Turks ever lived there; just like there is hardly any sign that the Greeks ever lived in the North. That was what I was thinking with a heavy heart as I walked around in that village on that Sunday. And than I remembered what my aunt was saying on the way to the village...Turkish made wood stoves are all the rage in Flasou and that the Demirdöküm is the much preferred brand, that the Greek Cypriots are among the best customers at the Güzelyurt open market and that a Greek Cypriot priest with his string bag has become a regular sight there. Who knows, may be we are leaving the past behind us at long last.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 08:04:23 +0000
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